Sherrod Brown and his GOP pal take on the banks -- again

In a new letter to be sent to regulators today, the senators “argue for tougher rules on bank capital reserves, the cushion that financial institutions must keep against losses,” according to The New York Times. The current proposal on capital reserves does not go far enough, they say.

“With financial regulators considering a host of new domestic and international capital requirements, we write today to urge your agencies to simplify and enhance the capital rules that will apply to U.S. banks,” reads the letter from the two lawmakers. (The Times post includes the letter in full.)

Stricter requirements would “properly align incentives for megabanks by lessening government support for the financial sector, and reassure financial markets that the U.S. financial system is healthy,” the lawmakers write.

Sens. Brown and Vitter sit on the Senate Banking Committee. Their letter went to three prominent regulators: Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman; Martin J. Gruenberg, acting chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.; and Thomas J. Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The Times notes that regulators “have been grappling with the issue of bank capital since the financial crisis led the government to rescue the largest banks in a taxpayer bailout.” The financial industry has pushed back against calls to increase capital buffers, “arguing that more equity financing would be burdensome for their business,” according to the newspaper.

The senators first sent a letter to Mr. Bernanke in August, responding to the Fed's decision to support capital rules drafted by an international group of officials known as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Those rules, called Basel III, “would require banks to hold the equivalent of at least 7 percent of their assets in so-called Tier 1 common capital,” according to The Times. Banks considered “systemically important” — those whose failure could threaten the financial system – would be required to hold capital above that amount.

Mr. Brown tells The Times that the idea of an alliance with the conservative Sen. Vitter occurred to him during a hearing in July, when he admired the questions the Louisiana Republican was putting to Mr. Bernanke.

A torrent of activity: The smart students at Case Western Reserve University have many talents. Among them: downloading and disseminating, for free, copyrighted content from BitTorrent networks, the P2P file sharing tools that allow users to freely stream material from various web sources at the same time.

Slate.com points to a new list of the 50 torrentingest college campuses nationwide compiled by TorrentFreak.

The chart includes the name of each college paired with the absolute number of hits to a torrenting network that were then traced back to that college's IP address.

By that measure, Case Western Reserve is No. 22 on the list, with 387 hits.

But Slate.com tweaks the numbers a bit to account for each school's enrollment data. With that adjustment in place, Case Western Reserve and its 4,016 undergraduate students ranked No. 1, with 0.096 hits per undergrad.

When Gitmo prisoners want you to apologize …: Take this as a sign that our government is out of control when it comes to keeping secrets.

“U.S. security restrictions governing the statements of former CIA captives held at Guantanamo are so stringent that one prisoner's assessment of basketball star LeBron James was treated as a top national secret for two months, a military defense lawyer said on Tuesday,” Reuters reports.

The news service says the incident was disclosed by Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki, a defense lawyer for Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, one of five prisoners charged with orchestrating the Sept. 11 plot to crash hijacked commercial planes into U.S. buildings.

Mr. Bogucki says another of his Guantanamo prisoner clients, former CIA captive Muhammed Rahim, wrote a note criticizing Mr. James' decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in 2010.

"LeBron James is a very bad man. He should apologize to the city of Cleveland," Mr. Bogucki quoted the note as saying.

Mr. Rahim “has not been charged with a crime but because he was previously held and interrogated by the CIA, his communications are subject to restrictions similar to those of the alleged September 11 plotters ¬— every word they write or utter is presumed to be 'Top Secret' unless a government Security Classification Review Team declares them safe for public release,” Reuters notes.

In good company:Investor's Business Daily has kind words for Cleveland-based TransDigm Group in the wake of the aircraft component maker's announcement that its board of directors approved a special dividend of $12.85 a share.

“TransDigm's special dividend gives its stock a yield of 8.6%, the biggest in the Aerospace/Defense group,” the newspaper reports. “Group members Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman have yields of 2.4% to 3.1%. All three pay regular quarterly dividends.”

In TransDigm's latest four quarters, the paper notes, “earnings grew 42% to 72%. Sales growth ranged from 39% to 54% over the same period. TransDigm's profit and revenue gains are well above the minimum 25% increases for leading stocks.”

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters see earnings jumping 50% to $6.71 a share for its fiscal 2012, up from 34% growth in fiscal 2011.

Yep, he's that good: Getting excited yet about the start of the NBA season, Cavaliers fans? You should, according to this New York Times blog post, because you'll have a chance to watch one of the league's five players most likely to make the jump this year to stardom.

That player, of course, is point guard Kyrie Irving, who in 51 games last season “tallied 21.4 points, 6.4 assists, and 4.4 rebounds per 36 minutes, along with a 57 percent true shooting percentage, remarkable for a first-year player,” the blog post says, employing some advanced statistical metrics.

“Now, with veteran forward Anderson Varejao back from injury, second-year man Tristan Thompson poised for a second-year boost, and rookies Tyler Zeller and Dion Waiters looking to make their own immediate impacts, the future is looking brighter in Cleveland. And it all starts with Irving,” according to The Times.

The other players poised for a 2012-13 breakthrough, according to the blog post? Ty Lawson of Denver, Eric Gordon of New Orleans, Greg Monroe of Detroit and DeMarcus Cousins of Sacramento.